Tess screamed at the little creature scratching her, as she again tried to strike it down.
Attack
Damage
Euphemia frowns and, adjusting her grip on the longspear, once more attempts to thrust the weapon into the creature.
Slightly closer, but... not quite.
Oscar stands on a shelf to gain height, then levels his crossbow at the construct cat. With a creak the shelves start to topple, and the arcanist scurries for safety, bolt lost into the dark recesses of the shop.
Velrun this time manages to hurt the vile thing, his rapier slashing through desiccated bandages and into gristle... it is nearly enough to end the animated thing, his blade coming back smeared with an oily residue, but not quite...
Staccato in its movements now, whatever power animating it somehow failing, the creature continues to attack Tessara...
Perhaps third time will be the charm?
... Perhaps Desna does not approve of this false cleric.
Oscar's next bolt goes wild - but at least he manages to avoid his friends. "What is this thing?" he growls in frustration as more bad luck plagues his party. "They seem to have found a way to give it a cat's nine lives!"
"A thing as foul as its master!" Velrun exclaims in reply as he again strikes at the creature.
Tess had began feeling woozy from the accumulated wounds from the beast, but she again tried to strike it down.
Attack
Damage
The wriggling, spasmodic movements of the thing on the desk evades - in turn - strikes from Tessara, Oscar and Euphemia... before, skewered the thing on cold steel, Velrun runs it through with his rapier...
Pushing the horrid, and now dead, husk from the top of the desk, the group are able to finally rummage through Crux's over-stuffed drawers... there are several vials and small flasks amongst the loose-leaved papers - several of which have leaked and stained the wood of the drawer with a rainbow of colours...
In the uppermost desk drawer is what must surely be the stolen nail. Around 7 inches in length, this rough-forged spike is covered in sigils and wards from head to point, and is now severely bent from wrenching of the item from the ceiling beam in the theatre...
Velrun takes the healing scrolls and proceeds to cast both of them upon Tessara and himself before turning his attention to the nail. "Well we have what we came for, but I do not know if it is safe to touch. Perhaps just take the entire drawer with us to be safe."
”Thanks, Velrun! Felt like I might pass out for a second there! I say we take all the items and get before the guards show up. We might be able to sell some of this to keep a roof over our head for a while,” she exclaims as the group rifled through the items.
Euphemia lowers the longspear when the thing finally seemed to be dead, awkwardly holding it in one hand. Still wide-eyed, she lifts a single finger as Velrun begins removing things from the desk and Tessara advises taking everything, and after a moment of stiff silence she speaks. "Normally, I am very much against theft. However, being that we are in the office of a crazed thief-slash-necromancer, I will make an exception. Let's take anything we want that isn't bolted down."
She offers Oscar his longspear back, if he desires it.
"I... I suppose so." Oscar is torn "Though we should be prepared to return them, in the event the proprietor has a sudden rush of reasonableness."
Stuffing the scrolls into their bags and hiding the nail somewhere about their person, the group quickly look for other valuables in the office - the logic that Crux is a thief and therefore can have no recourse upon Euphemia and the rest seeming to hold some water... even though Oscar does raise a mild concern. There are many occult items here, some likely genuine and some almost certain to be tawdry fakes, and - acting as quickly as they can - the friends take a wide selection of the better looking pieces...
And then, deciding that they have pushed their luck far enough, the friends slip out into the street once more - the pathetic homoncule stupidly uttering "Thankyou... come again soon... Thankyou... come again soon..." as the door slams shut. There is no sign of Hood and his gang... nor of Crux... and so, it would seem the favour asked by Chelman, the retrieval of the Nail, is nearly complete.
Velrun motions to the direction of the Theatre, "Let's hurry back there, but I must say it doesn't take a genius to figure out where we are going...and Crux is no fool. We should take an indirect path to the Theatre and see if there is an ambush awaiting our arrival."
Oscar nods in approval to Velrun's streetsmart suggestion. "An excellent idea. Who knows the way?"
”Don’t look at me, boys. I’m as spun around in this city as the rest of you are,” Tess groaned as she walked outside, noticing all the city seemed quite similar.
Taking a circuitous route back to the Theatre Infernalis, and on more than one occasion finding themselves disoriented and lost within the jumble of streets, lanes and alleys of the Artist's Quarter, the friends are unnoticed and untroubled in their journey... the hour is rather late and the streets whilst still busy are no longer as thronged as they were earlier in the evening. And around the Theatre itself, the street is ominously devoid of people...
The grand doors to the building are drawn shut... and a cloying sulphurous smell hangs heavy in the air...
Velrun gazes up uneasily at the now-sealed building here, his hand resting on the hilt of his blade. "Are we too late? Did Crux beat us here?"
Oscar sniffs the thick scent and shifts the shoulder that holds the crosbow. "Pass me some of those scrolls." he says, matching Velrun's tone. "And everyone on their guard. Perhaps... perhaps someone has simply gone heavy on the house incense."
Tess moves ahead and raps on the closest door or windowsill, knowing in her heart that the proprietors of the establishment would be ecstatic to see the strange nail brought home n
Tessara's knocking, increasingly insistent and loud, goes ignored... or maybe, and worse, she is unheard...
"Honestly... all I wanted was a nice trip into the city... I suppose this will make a good story in twenty or so years." Euphemia frowns and adjusts her grip on the longspear Oscar does not seem to have taken back. She glances to Tessara, then to the door. "If that doesn't work, we're probably going to have to force our way in unless they left it unlocked. Think there might be a service entrance around the back?"
Euphemia will tentatively try the handle of the front door.
Seeing no one coming to the door only causes Velrun's uneasiness to grow. "Hard to think another way in does not exist...but I did not see one earlier..." As the lack of activity around the Theatre grows more pronounced he motions towards the rear of the building, "Let's check it out."
"Lead on."
Velrun's exploration around the sides of the theatre determine that the old building is nestled, rather snugly, against its neighbours... and, with it backing onto a large (and locked) costumer's warehouse, it seems that there is no way of gaining entrance to the ominously quiet Theatre Infernalis other than the front doors.
And so, it falls to Euphemia - with her friends waiting behind her - to cautiously open the door. Once lively, the lobby beyond is now eerily quiet save for the mechanical whir of automatons that remain set to their macabre motions, now with no one left to surprise or frighten.
Tables and chairs have been overturned and tossed throughout the area, and a mustard-yellow brume hangs low in the air, carrying with it a foul, sulphurous stench. The ticket stand has been smashed to splinters, the display cases in the rear appear ransacked, and the bar itself is smouldering from having been set partially alight. Whether through the mist’s distortive haze or some trick of the low lighting, a faint phosphorescence seems to silently pulsate near the bar’s far side.
'Curse of nobility - to lead when we would rather follow.' Oscar straightens his coat, readies his crossbow, and strides in. "Crux? Chelman?"
Velrun moves up next to the nobleman, his blade out and at the ready. Who did this? Was it really Crux behind all of this? The package where the Nail sits securely in his pack weighs like a ton to him.
”Should we out the nail back where it was supposed to go? Anyone have a hammer? Maybe everyone will calm down if they see it back in its place?”
"I don't" Oscar says shortly "Do you think that will help?" he catches himself "Well, I don't suppose it can hurt. Let's pile up some tables, and we'll keep watch while..." Oscar hunts for the strongest member of their group, discounts Drin, and comes up short "you hammer it in with the pommel of a dagger or something."
Euphemia eyes the room warily as they re-enter it and ensures the door is shut behind them to prevent passerby from wandering in, a frown all but glued onto her lips. Her voice is still low, as if scared they might be overheard, "Can we do it quickly?"
The phosphorescent light pulsing near the bar is quick to catch her attention, and Euphemia will cast Detect Magic; once she has determined whether or not it is magical, and regardless of whether or not it is magical, she will cautiously approach for a better look with the longspear clenched in a white-knuckled grip.
Possibly unsurprisingly, no-one calls out in reply to Oscar's greeting...
There are many tables and chairs scattered around the place and so creating a platform from which the nail can be hammered back into its original home should be a relatively easy task. It is while Drin and Oscar are pulling one of the tables upright that Velrun notices it...
The nail in the south-western corner... a nail that was definitely hammered into the ceiling when last the group were here... is gone.
Whilst Velrun, Drin and Oscar are occupied, Euphemia (who registers some faint traces of magic but nothing distinct enough to identify) and Tessara continue to explore the bar area... the strong smell of alcohol emanates from the partially burned bar. The back cabinets have been largely emptied of bottles, and the bar is strewn with shredded towels and discarded corks. A lantern with an open hood is blackened from flames, as if used to ignite something... whilst the bar top still smolders from having been set alight.
...and from the far side of the bar, beyond Euphemia's view, comes a wet, slurping sound - as if something large was moving along a sodden surface.
Velrun pales and points up to the ceiling, "The nail! It's...it's GONE," he exclaims. Dropping back towards the bar he draws his rapier after securing the first Nail in its package.
"We need to find Crux, he is the only one who would have dared to steal that Nail!" He then moves over to where the scorch marks cover the bar area, "Those 'Hood's Rats' are behind this, no doubt...what is that noise?"
Slipping over the charred wood of the bar like a comically inflated slug, a vile thing appears as Velrun draws closer... Adding to the horror of the situation, the barman's recognizable corpulent face and patchy beard appears perched on the bloated body of the enormous, fiendish maggot - the bartender still wears the shredded remains of his black and red warlock costume, its high collar and pointed hat adding a macabre accent to the terrible transformation. The creature opens its mouth in a silent scream towards the group...
...and then, regurgitating in a hideous peristalsis, the beast sprays a torrent of squirming maggots towards Velrun.
An expression of disgust crossing her features, Euphemia's grip on the longspear tightens even further as the creature reveals itself. Gods have mercy, she prays silently as she takes a catious stride closer before lashing out with the longspear at the hideous thing.
Velrun stumbles back away from the disgusting mass of vile maggots, moving back to find something to throw at the larval monstrosity.
What...by the Gods...HAPPENED to him??
Finding a half empty bottle laying on the ground he whirls the bottle around his head and flings it at the disgusting creature.
;
Oscar considers the scrolls for a moment, then kneels and aims with the crossbow. Desperately he starts to fumble another bolt in as soon as the first has flown. 'It's... quieter than I thought. Battle.' Oscar thinks, then realises that everyone - like him - is concentrating on fighting the barman and not on quips, exchanging theories or even discussing tactics. 'I suppose that's the difference between the real world and a play - too busy trying to stay alive.'
Tess again uses her mental magic and picks up an empty bottle from behind the bar and pitches it at the larvae.
Ranged attack
Damage
Holding back the nausea of seeing this changed bartender, Drin rushes in... and misses with his hurried attack. He is fortunate that the beast, corpulent and slow-witted, is ineffective as it bites back at him...
Oscar smiled in relief as his bolt finally hit the creature's eye - but though the organ popped like a pimple it didn't seem to especially fase the creature.
Velrun grips his blade tightly and maneuvers around the edge of the bar, stabbing at the larval creature...
Euphemia once more thrusts the spear towards the abomination of a creature.
Close, but not quite.
With her magic not working, Tess tries a foolhardy move. She double moves to 10’ north of Euphemia and begins climbing up on the bar. If her friends could survive one more round, she hoped to help provide some flanking next round.
As wet ichor oozes from the flank of the larval abomination, Oscar's aim is true... the bolt embedding deeply into grey flesh - sending it into a rage. Rearing up, it bites furiously at Drin... suddenly going limp, the halfling drops his weapon with a clatter...
"Drin!" Velrun exclaims as he steps behind the larval abomination, stabbing at it in a fury.
Tess pulls her dagger and moves just north of the larvae on the bar. She would allow for flanking if one of the others could move south of the monstrosity.
Euphemia once again thrusts the point of the longspear at the larval monstrosity.
Euphemia, with the grotesque larva's attention turned towards Tessara, sees her opportunity... and, with her spear more confidently wielded, she plunges the weapon through the monster. It dies with a horrendous, mewling squeal... and slumps down off the bar like a sack of wet offal. There is some fortune that it lands with its face down such that the friends don't have to gaze at the visage of the demonically changed bartender.
...and Drin, knocked unconscious by the larva's final attack, is almost peaceful as he lies next to the dead thing.
The display cabinets at the rear of the bar seem to have largely escaped the theatre’s turmoil unscathed, save for a single case surrounded by a semicircle of shattered glass. The arches of silver glyphs that radiate across the oor here now glow as if fresh from the forge, causing the wood into which they are inlaid to smoke viciously in foul-smelling streamers...
Velrun sheathes his rapier and quickly moves to the unconscious form of Drin. "We have to get you out of here! Those runes are...doing something..." suddenly remembering the healing potions from Crux's office he quickly takes out one of the precious vials and dribbles the contents down the halfling's throat...
Euphemia cautiously pokes the monstrosity with the spear a few times before being satisfied that it is dead. "This place is a living nightmare... If we can get a better look, we might be able to determine what those glyphs are doing."